Rosie O’Donnell and Food Addiction

I read the above article last night and a few more articles on Rosie O’Donnell’s gastric sleeve surgery and I wanted to cry then slap her then cry again. I understand her reasoning for having this surgery because she had a heart attack in 2012 but I believe she is treating the symptoms and not the disease…and the disease I’m talking about is food addiction.

Listen, I know from addiction, I’ve suffered from many. I’m sober 9 years off of drugs, alcohol, food and gambling. Food addiction was one of the main addictions. I over-ate and under-ate. Food made me it’s bitch. I’ve done ever diet out there imaginable, I’ve stuck my finger down my throat and I’ve eaten next to nothing. I liked to over-eat for a while then deprive myself with anorexia for months. I felt I was taking control of my life when I was anorexic and the skinner I got the more I felt better about myself.

You can get all the gastric surgery you want but it is not going to fix the problem which centers in the mind. Rosie is not going to get self worth and fix the shame she has by being skinny.

It is obvious to me that Rosie has a food addiction and doesn’t realize it or doesn’t care to take the necessary steps to address it. By steps I mean the steps in recovery. Step one – admitting we were powerless of food and our life has become unmanageable. Just by reading the news on Rosie for years now it seems her life has been somewhat unmanageable. The biggest indicator to me that she has food addiction is that she compared her effort to reduce her sugar consumption to alcoholism.

Rosie said, “I read in a magazine article that sugar is eight times more addictive than heroin…Because of giving up sugar, I walk past one of those kiosks selling newspapers and I’m like, ‘There’s the Swedish fish. They’re right there.’ Almost like how alcoholics can’t go into a bar. They want to grab the bottle. I want to do that with the Swedish fish.”

That’s not true actually. I don’t walk by a bar or a pharmacy or some dudes doing heroin and want to grab the bottle, pill or needle. The obsession to drink and use has been lifted. It has left me because I work a rigorous recovery program and I’ve had a spiritual awakening as a result of doing the steps. If I’m not rigorous about working my recovery program then yes, a bottle, pill or needle would look good to me.

You can put the plug in the jug as we say in recovery but you will still be dealing with the ism of alcoholism. The ism is the mental obsession and spiritual malady one has if their alcoholism isn’t arrested by recovery efforts.

It’s tragic to me that she spent all this money and got invasive surgery when the solution to her problems is spiritual and spirituality is free and works like magic.